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Hotelier Middle East talks to Intelligent Data Systems general manager of sales Rajesh P Yadav about streamlining hotel operations, research and development, understanding industry trends and the importance of training.

How long has IDS been present in the Middle East?

IDS setup its operations in the late 90s in the UAE through our office in Dubai, and our association with the region's hospitality industry began then. Subsequently we established operations in Bahrain, Egypt, Qatar and very recently in Saudi Arabia. Today we have more than 300 hotels and resorts in the Middle East that use one or more solution from IDS Fortune Suite of Hospitality products.

Why did IDS set up its operations in the Middle East?

The Middle East has always shown great interest in hospitality, more so because of its involvement in world trade and commerce. Dubai and Egypt also have a great inflow of leisure tourisms. IDS wanted to be a part of this booming hospitality market and create its own niche as an IT partner to the hotels and resorts of the region.

Which hotels do you work with in the Middle East?

ETA Star Group, Ramee Group of Hotels, Marco Polo Hotel, Dubai Concorde, Ramada Hotel, Delmon International Hotel in Bahrain, Megawish Swiss Inn, Vera Club Queen Sharm, Vera Club Queen View in Egypt and Carlton Al Moaibed Hotel, Dammam are some of the hospitality enterprises that we work with in the Middle East.

What software solutions does IDS offer for hotels?

We offer a host of solutions specifically designed for the hospitality sector. We design, develop, market, install, implement and maintain a range of holistic solutions under the following categories: property management solutions, restaurant management solutions, web-based solutions (central reservation systems) and business and service enhancement solutions.

What new solutions have you recently introduced to the market?

For our 20th anniversary year, we have introduced seven new products. There is Fortune Care, which is a quality management system that logs, allocates, tracks and analyses guest requests, complaints and incidents to enhance and streamline guest services; and Fortune Analytix, which empowers decision makers by providing them with key performance indicators to enable speedy decisions.

Apart from these, we have also introduced three web-based products: Fortune iBooking, Fortune iCheck-in and Fortune RevMax, which enable online and real-time reservations and instant online check-in, forgoing the traditional way of checking in. RevMax is used to up-sell special services on the web and make the guest feel more welcome. There are also Fortune Rewardz and Fortune SMSenger, both aiming at enhancement of guest loyalty.

How do you ensure that your software solutions cater to hoteliers needs?

We have more than 400 man-years experience in the hospitality software domain.

Our clients play a very important role when it comes to feedback and improvement of our existing solutions. Today we have more than 1300 hotels and resorts using one or more of our solutions in 20 countries. We have collated the best practices of all these hotels and resorts in various countries and incorporated them in our various software offerings.

From time to time we invite professionals from the hospitality industry to our Global Research and Development Centre in Bangalore, India to do a GAP analysis on our products based on their area of expertise within the hospitality domain. These independent reports from the hospitality industry professionals themselves help us keep abreast of their current and future needs.

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